“I was for some years, though at distant intervals, an occasional contributor to its pages. The few prose compositions you may call to mind were all headed ‘A Few Queries;’ many of these related to architectural subjects. They were all accepted, and to one paper was assigned the post of honour, the first page. I have not a copy of each by me, but I can recall them to your recollection by a transcript of one, which I herewith enclose, and therein you will see the articles alluded to.

“I think, too, it was in one of these papers that the monstrous superstructure then overhanging the Mansion House, in the City, and since removed, was first brought into notice.

“It was there, too, that attention was first directed to the utterly neglected condition of the Parks, particularly Hyde Park,* now become undoubtedly one of the completest and finest promenades in Europe.

“You will make such use of these hints as you may think proper, and, with the best wishes for the success of your work,

“Whether it is quite fair to be always reproaching our Continental neighbours for commencing buildings which they never finish, while we exhibit Somerset House (the finest and most central object of our metropolis) with an entire wing yet unbuilt, and thus left for the best part of a century?

“Whether, in these refining times, when a cowkeeper has named his cow-shed a Lactearium, the old-fashioned name of the City-road, leading to it, might not be considered obsolete, and changed to that of the Via Lactea?

“Why the great western door of St. Paul’s, affording so fine a vista to the cupola, is never opened? Whether the Dean and Chapter are afraid that, by letting in so much light and air to the church, all the damp and mildew would be excluded? or whether it is intended for the benefit of the bun trade, the little door opened being built close against the pastry-cook’s shop?

“Why the numbers of the pictures at our annual exhibition are so ingeniously placed as to make up just one-half of the fatigue of the day, in finding them out? whether there is any joke in the thing? and where the gist lies?

“When the opening into Lincoln’s-inn Fields, begun twenty years ago, by the way of Pickett Place, shall be completed? and whether, whenever that event shall occur, it would not be a great treat to mark the astonishment of many of the neighbouring inhabitants at first sight of that terra incognita? many thousands having, from its always having been so carefully shut up, never so much as dreamed of its existence!

“Whether the taste for music is not sufficiently spread to allow of the Italian Opera being thrown open to the public, at something like the prices at which it is enjoyed in other capitals? and, as under the present system of exclusion all who have anything to do in its management have been invariably ruined, whether it might not (just by way of experiment) be as well to try, in place of the patronage of the great, what might be done by the admission of the many?

“Why, as we seem at length awakened in this, ‘the first capital of Europe,’ to the propriety of a few statues here and there, one or two might not, just by way of change, be exhibited of marble? and whether, through the smoke which prevails always, and the fog which prevails often, those of bronze do not, at a very few feet distance, look wonderfully like huge heaps of mud?

“Why, amongst the many improvements for regaining land from the water, that great marsh within view of the Royal Palace, called the Parade, in St. James’s Park, might not be advantageously attempted? or whether, as among the numerous Government offices which surround it, so many persons are presumed to be cooling their heels in attendance within, it is deemed but fair and equitable that the crowd should he allowed to cool their heels without?”